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"The Greatest Show On Earth (1952)\n \n\n\n\tI hadn't seen Cecil B. De Mille's circus film, often hailed as one of the most undeserving Best Picture Oscar winners, in a few years and decided to take a look at it again last night.\n \n\n\n\tThere's too much in the way of Technicolor circus acts and even the cornball soap opera plot to ever call this film boring. Much of the cast is to be commended for doing the best they can with their material. Charlton Heston authoritatively barks out commands as the manager of the circus who seems to hold the whole thing together. He may seem stereotypically larger than life but that's what a big top film like this needs for a central character. Heston was third billed in this production but De Mille gave him the first big break of his career by casting him in this film, and the actor was forever grateful to the old man afterward for it. (Bigger things were to come for Heston a few years later when the same director would have him parting the Red Sea).\n \n\n\n\t\n \n\n\n\tConsidering the fact that I normally find him to be a boring actor, Cornel Wilde, fake French accent and all, is quite engaging as the Great Sebastian, the aerial artist-womanizer hired for the show. His character is supposed to be charismatic and flashy and Wilde succeeds in that. SPOILER ALERT: I carefully watched the scene in which Sebastian (okay, his aerial double) crashes to the ground. It is quickly edited when he hits the ground but if you use the slow motion freeze on a DVD player you see that the stunt man actually disappears into a hole (presumably some kind of ground appearing mattress). \n \n\n\n\tBetty Hutton I found to be generally irritating as Holly, Sebastian's rival trapeze artist, tryjng to steal the limelight from him while he performs in the air. Wilde, being a hot blooded womanizing type, tries to romance her, of course, while stolid Heston stands around and does a slow burn over it while still barking orders (he and Holly had been sweeties, sort of). Hutton gets excited a lot and is perhaps a little bit less high energy than usual but her character is still a general pain.\n \n\n\n\t\n \n\n\n\tOthers in the cast include Gloria Grahame as a sexy lady with an elephant act (and a jealous boyfriend in Lyle Bettger), Dorothy Lamour playing a slightly dim witted circus performer in big costumes and doing a South Seas tribute song, and James Stewart in that stereotype of all stereotypes, as Buttons, the sad clown only this one has a secret (the guy wears his clown makeup all the time - a major clue if ever there was one that something is amiss but no one in the circus seems to question it).\n \n\n\n\tHighlight of the film is, without question, the big train crash towards the end. Yes, it's done with models but the special effects are still reasonably convincing, and it is exciting to see those cars pile into one another as the train de-rails. Afterward De Mille admirably captures the chaos on the ground as people are trapped or running around and lions and tigers are running loose. Heston gets pinned under some metal but, being the true circus man with sawdust in his veins that he is, he keeps barking orders while trapped, even though he could bleed to death from a severed artery. What a guy!\n \n\n\n\t \n\n\n\tWith Heston down and finally passing out, Hutton will soon start barking orders at everyone. Why didn't someone slap her silly? Time for Jimmy Stewart's clown (he used to be a doctor) to step into the breach. He will work on saving Heston but I wish he had also taken the time to sew up Hutton's mouth.\n \n\n\n\tThere are a lot of guest star appearances in the film from the likes of Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Hopalong Cassidy and, for some unexplained reason, Edmond O'Brien as a carnival barker in the final seconds of the film. But, as the camera pans across the laughing and cheering spectators, you also spot the likes of Mona Freeman, Mary Murphy and Nancy Gates, among others. Apparently Kathleen Freeman was also in there somewhere but I didn't spot her.\n \n\n\n\tIn the final analysis, De Mille's big top film can still be enjoyed, corny as it may be, even if the list of superior films released in 1952 is a pretty extensive one (for me, at least).\n \n\n\n\tBy the way, clowns are not funny. They're creepy. But that, as they say, is another story.\n \n\n\n\t\n \n\n\n\t3 out of 4\n "
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